To enable system and card manufacturers to build both computer and non-computer consumer products that can freely interchange plug-in peripheral cards, the PCMCIA Card standard was developed. The PCMCIA Card standard is also referred to as the PC Card standard. Electronic digital data is stored in the plug-in peripheral cards built according to the PC Card standard. For example, a computer stores digital data in a PC Card. To provide peripheral card compatibility, the PC Card standard defines the physical card attributes, the card interface attributes, and the card software attributes of the PC Card. One type of PC Card uses semiconductor memory, such as flash memory, located within the card for data storage. FIG. 1 is an illustration of a PC Card.
Although the standard PC Card has been useful in standardizing plug-in peripheral cards, it is not without its drawbacks. One problem arises from the manner in which the card information is stored. In the definition of card software attributes, the PC Card standard defines the manner in which the card information should be structured on the card. This information structure, called the Card Information Structure ("CIS"), is defined as one or more chains (or linked lists) of data blocks, called tuples. One problem with the linked list approach to storing information is that when the host system receiving the PC Card wants to retrieve information about the PC Card, the host system must go through each tuple in the linked list until the host system reaches the tuple containing the information that the host system is looking for. This results in undesired latency while the host system is looking for data. In addition, the above system results in added complexity for host system software because implementing the tuple reader is complex.
Another disadvantage of the PC Card standard is that for some products, the PC Card is too large. Products in which PC Cards are used are decreasing in size. As this occurs, the PC Card, although small, becomes too large for many applications. Thus, for some applications, the form factor of the PC Card is too large.